Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 09, 2014 @11:32PM
from the I-never-heard-of-such-a-thing-and-even-if-I-did-I-don't-remember-when dept.

EwanPalmer (2536690) writes "Three scientists and Star Trek actress Kate Mulgrew say they were duped into appearing in a controversial documentary which claims the Earth is the center of the Universe. The Principle, a film which describes itself as 'destined to become one of the most controversial films of our time', argues the long-debunked theory of geocentrism – where the earth is the center of the Universe and the Sun resolves around it – is true and Nasa has tried to cover it up. The film features the narration of actress Mulgrew, who played the part of captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek Voyager, as well as three prominent scientists."

Supposedly a large # of the actors in the film Innocence of Muslims [wikipedia.org] were duped into appearing in the film and had their lines (sloppily) edited after the fact to be about Mohammed instead of generic desert villain.

One of those actresses recently won a lawsuit against the director for doing so. These people have a legitimate claim IMO that the deception damages their career and should require remuneration along with bans on distribution of the fraudulently produced picture. I wonder if this same situation doesn't apply to this ridiculous movie.

I know that if I was the lawyer for Mulgrew I'd be pointing out the same thing. Star Trek might not be 'good science', but it's at least progressive in it's views(on science). Actors in it are expected to know at least a little.

Whether or not ST had "good science" or what their moral, ethical or scientific views were is completely irrelevant.Even whether the actors in it cared or even agreed with those views is irrelevant if the actor knowingly agreed to do the job anyway.

The producers deliberately lied to the actor.

The point is that the actor was scammed into appearing in a movie they would not have done had the producers been honest about their intentions.

Exactly. It's one thing to appear in a work of fiction (e.g. Star Trek) when you know up front that this is what it is, and it's not being presented as anything else. It's an entirely different thing when you're told the work is one thing, but it's then presented as something else--and even more different if you're edited or overdubbed in a misleading fashion.

I wouldn't really take that exact approach as she's probably not going to be acting in any more Trek. I'd point out that she earns X amount of money by going to fan conventions, that she anticipates being able to do this for Y number of years into the future, and those fans are the type that would be extremely alienated by the perception that she's so scientifically illiterate, so she stands to lose X*Y amount of money. I daresay there's enough backlash in Trek forums to be able to prove this already.

Not just scientific views, I would add, but an interesting take on how a post-scarcity society might function

Didn't seem so "post scarcity" to me: lots of people were fighting wars over resources. And although you could live a pretty decent life on Earth by current standards, access to spacecraft etc. was limited.

The entire Star Trek universe eventually turned into some kind of European style technocracy, albeit unreasonably well governed even as such.

The thing that struck me most was how Wesley had trouble getting a slot in the Academy despite being a Wunderkind. In a "post scarcity" world, they should have made more spots for recruits like that. Anyone interested in Starfleet should have been accommodated. Built more ships. Added a new wing to the Academy. Whatever.

The situation with Bashir and Bashir's dad also seemed a bit appalling. Clearly there's still an underclass that's shat upon in the 24th century. The Utopian rhetoric didn't change that.

Any Earth colony was a clear indication that there were people fed up with how things were run back on Euro-Earth.

There are certain ambiguities, because the competence of the average officer does not seem to gel with the seeming extreme ultra-elite status of Starfleet Academy depicted in some episodes. And part of the problem is the graduating classes seem far too small. It is possible that there are many routes into Starfleet, and the Academy is the fast track towards command positions. The best way to rationalize this may be that Starfleet Academy is like West Point -- not every officer in the US Army went to West

Besides everyone knows star trek is a sifi based entertainment show, its not claiming to be factual..

"Uh, Bill, you do realize that this is a TV show, right? You are not actually the captain of a starship. We are not actually on a five year mission in space. These computer banks? They're just cardboard boxes wired up with blinking Christmas lights."

Also, Ben Stein's pile of crap Expelled. The scientists interviewed (including Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers) were outright lied to about the nature of the film, then had their interviews deceptively cut and edited. It's in the nature of religious apologists to lie.

And in the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] on this abomination, it says that in addition to Mulgrew it also features Michio Kaku and Lawrence Krauss. Lawyer feeding time, indeed. By the way, it would appear that the guy excreting this crap is not only a complete nitwit on astrophysics, but has equally outdated notions about Jews and the Holocaust. Nasty piece of work, it seems.

Yeah the guy who backed those films is a nut job. I read a few of his "papers" from his website [galileowaswrong.com] and he is totally off the wall. He was using Jews as an excuse for NASA covering up the "truth".

Another one of his "articles" was arguing that the Catholic church is in league with the Atheist's and Jews because they came out at said that there is no conflict between the Catholic faith and evolution. He just seems fixated on one issue. I stopped reading once I had a clear picture that the guy was crazy and more

Thanks for informing me of this. I used to enjoy his Ben Stein's Money show on occasion some years back, but I have now lost all respect for the man whatsoever.

Oh it goes much deeper. People tended to forget that before his acting career Stein was a speech writer for Nixon and is as right wing religious and political fundamentalist as they come. He has "moderated" atheist/religious debates that clearly showed his bias as he tries to rig the debates.

I don't claim to know whether IoM is truthful or not. I think it's unlikely to be 100% true or false. As any contemporary account of centuries-old events must be. I do know that its makers are not historians, or theologists, which kind of makes me think more false than true.

I'm not claiming that its 100% accurate, but the gist of it (violent religion based on teachings of a nasty sex-mad warlord) are true. Personally I have never heard any evidence that Muhammad and Umar had a gay relationship... but the pedophilia, brutal killings, etc. are all spot on.

Well, you wrote "a film depicting the truth", unqualified. The qualification of Muhammad as a sex-mad warlord is, on both counts, not something that is readily apparent from scripture, or recorded historical accounts.

The alleged pedophilia is, it seems to me, a selective application of modern mores onto ancient history. If we did the same to Christendom or Judaism or basically basically any other -ism, I expect we'd find that in those circles back then it was (also) pretty regular practice to consider women adults (in the sense of ready for sexual relations) after their first menstruation.

Likewise, there is no shortage of violence and brutal killings in the history of Christianity and Judaism. And similar to Islam, there continue to be extremist, violent and racist, fringes to those religions to this day.

At any rate, the makers of IoM are not scholars and have no authority to make any claims in these matters.

The qualification of Muhammad as a sex-mad warlord is, on both counts, not something that is readily apparent from scripture, or recorded historical accounts.

Seriously, you know that little about what's in the Qur'an? How can you be so ignorant on the subject? Muhammad was quite literally a warlord. An army leader. The "sex-mad" part is of course a subjective appreciation, but it suffices to say his proposition and practice of polygamy was non-standard at the time.

The alleged pedophilia is, it seems to me, a selective application of modern mores onto ancient history.

Irrelevant. He was either a pedophile or not. By the accounts of the Qur'an he was. Next thing you know you're gonna deny that slavery was practiced in the United States and you're gonna insist that we call it something else lest we have a "selective application of modern morals onto ancient history". Facts are facts, you can be more or less judgemental of them depending on how flexible your moral code is, but that doesn't change the underlying truth.

If we did the same to Christendom or Judaism or basically basically any other -ism, I expect we'd find that in those circles back then it was (also) pretty regular practice to consider women adults (in the sense of ready for sexual relations) after their first menstruation.

You're severely confused. Aisha's marriage is supposed to have happened before womanhood. That's part of the islamic teachings. And the source for many islamic authorities' teachings that girls can be given into marriage as early as 2 years young. Not only morally dubious by the standards of the day, but the source of hideous moral atrocities today, in parts of the world where Sharia is the law, the only law

In addition I never shy away from casting moral judgement on past events using modern standards and I think nobody should. Slavery was wrong then. is wrong now. It matters less what religion commended it.

Likewise, there is no shortage of violence and brutal killings in the history of Christianity and Judaism. And similar to Islam, there continue to be extremist, violent and racist, fringes to those religions to this day.

Islam's violence is far from a fringe phenomenon. Please feel free to condemn all violence equally but do not take me for a fool and tell me that Islam's teachings are equally dangerous to Christianity. At the very core they're all equal, but Christianity has been dragged kicking and screaming into something that's closer to the 21st century than the middle ages where vast portions of Islam still reside.

All that being said, IoM is a pile of steaming crap. I doubt anyone here disagrees. But it's not a pile of crap because of any major historical errors or for misrepresenting islam (by much). It's complete crap because it lacks any artistic value.

At any rate, the makers of IoM are not scholars and have no authority to make any claims in these matters.

Yes. And you should not speak on IoM because you are not a filmmaker or film historian and you should have no say in the matter. How about that?

How about judging the message less than the messenger? A pile of crap, or a masterpiece, is either one or the other irrespective of it's author.

It has to be said though, Mohammed got started early. Married Aisha at 7, pregnant by age 9. Must have ejaculated insider her pretty much the first time she had her period. In the literal sense of the word he was a paedophile, a lover of children, who from historical accounts treated her fairly well, showed her affection and love and got a boner who he saw her naked pre-pubescent body.

He kept slaves, he waged wars, he was illiterate and a general douchbag in many ways. That wouldn't be such a problem if the

Perhaps - but hardly unique - exactly the same things were happening as standard fair in Europe among Christians at the same time. Hell Christianity would keep it up for at least the next 400 years - average marriage age for women didn't go past 16 until the early 20th century and age-of-consent laws weren't passed anywhere until well after that.

So whether it's true or not- it says absolutely NOTHING about Islam. There is nothing in there about Muhammed that wasn't also true of Richard the Lionhearted.

>The obvious problem (unless you are one of those Muslims who think that anything that has ever been done by a non-Muslim at any time in history should be permitted for Muslims today) is that Muslims are still carrying out brutal attacks, raping women, etc today. Just ask the Hindus in Pakistan about the 'religion of peace'.

Christians are still doing that today as well. Ask the non-Christians in Nigeria, Sudan and Algiers a little about the religion of universal-brotherly-love.Hell even in Europe you still see atrocities committed by people fueled by their Christian beliefs. Remember the Olso shootings a few years ago ? Man grabbed a gun and shot 12 kids because they were liberals and as a Christian he believed he ought to fight (literally) against liberalism !

You can't judge a religion on the actions of extremists. I live in a majority Muslim city - and I have never experienced any violence from a Muslim, indeed they are the most law-abiding demographic in this city.

>Uhm you might want to look at the causes of these incidents. Typical Muslim reaction - try to eradicate non muslims then complain that they fight back!

Funny how you ignored the Anders Breivik example - suffice to say I think that these - like ALL wars have no innocent parties, both sides have equal share in the atrocity.Why would I have a Muslim reaction ? I'm not a Muslim, I'm not a Christian either - I'm a completely neutral observer here, so accusing me of bias is rather silly.

he never claimed that Christianity had anything to do with his attacks. If even if he did there would not have been thousands of Christians celebrating and saying what a good thing it was and christian priests encouraging others to do the same.

None of the 35 million Muslims in my city have ever celebrated an atrocity, none of their priests have ever encouraged anybody to do the same. In fact - you walk into a Muslim owned shop here you will see signs on the walls that say things like:IShallLoveAllMankind

Encouraging each other to live in peace with the non-muslim community here ( which is only slightly smaller at around 30 million the vast majority of whom are protestant Christians and who have their shops decorated with signs that spread the same message in the name of Jesus instead) - these communities live among each other, with each other, in perfect peace and harmony - both are convinced that the other's religion is wrong but neither group thinks violence is justified or allowed and in fact both groups spend most of their time trying to convert the other by competing over who can do the most charity for the poor population of the city !

The deadliest religious atrocity we have are pot luck dinners ! The worst problem we face is that these two religions are VERY happy to cooperate on the things they agree on - which means a constant stream of political jockeying against our laws allowing gay marriage and legal abortions which is funded and attended by both groups. A current law banning corporal punishment is being vehemently opposed by religious leaders- FROM BOTH religions, working TOGETHER.These aren't good things to be doing -but it's interesting that they are quite happy to put aside their differences and lobby collectively for the things they agree on (even when those things are wrong).

I LIVE among the proof of how wrong you are.

The only thing I can conclude from your Islamophobia is that you don't actually, personally, KNOW a single Muslim. Not really *know*.Like all discrimination - Islamophobia can ONLY exist in ignorance.

>And since when do two wrongs make a right?It doesn't - it was wrong when Christians did it, it was wrong when Pagans did it, it was wrong when Muslims did.

>Tu quoque is such a transparent line of reasoning...

It's only Tu quoque is you claim it excuses something - it's not Tu Quoque if you point out that this was the historical context - failing to view historical events through the lens of historical context is GUARANTEED to give you stupid answers.

"She is but 14 years old""And younger than her are happy mothers made"

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliette.

That's Renaissance England - and it remained common until the early 20th century. The REAL reason it changed was World War 1- with most of the young men gone to war for several years, women had to take over the work-force and do so without many potential suitors around.

"She is but 14 years old"
"And younger than her are happy mothers made"

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliette.

That's Renaissance England

By the way, even a cursory glance at Wikipedia would demonstrate your error regarding Shakespeare's time [wikipedia.org]:

Still, in most of Northwestern Europe, marriage at very early ages was rare. One thousand marriage certificates from 1619 to 1660 in the Archdiocese of Canterbury show that only one bride was 13 years of age, four were 15, twelve were 16, and seventeen were 17 years of age while the other 966 brides were at least 19 years of age at marriage. And the Church dictated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families; in the certificates, the most common age for the brides is 22 years. For the grooms 24 years is the most common age, with average ages of 24 years for the brides and 27 for the grooms. While European noblewomen married early, they were a small minority and the marriage certificates from Canterbury show that even among nobility it was very rare to marry women off at very early ages.

Keep in mind that Romeo and Juliet, while written by an Englishman, was set in Italy. The lines you quoted were probably meant to be either a joke or intended to shock the audience, as a jab at young aristocratic marriage ages (which were particularly associated with Catholic countries like Italy).

and it remained common until the early 20th century. The REAL reason it changed was World War 1- with most of the young men gone to war for several years, women had to take over the work-force and do so without many potential suitors around.

Also, after poking around a bit, I discovered my previous post was slightly in error at least for the U.S. -- the lowest median age for first marriage according to census data [about.com], apparently occurred in 1956, with women marrying then on average at age 20.1 years.

I don't know how it's done formally, but it seems the only reasonable way for the solar system is to define it as the sun, or the centre of the sun. Seeing as it's the SOLar system;)

For the galaxy it's probably better to define it as a region. Sagittarius A is the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy with a few million solar masses. Good a place as any to stick the 'centre' pin I reckon.

It's amazing that stuff like this and flat earth beliefs are still out there. These nutters are immune to

Same way you define the center of anything: the thing around which other things rotate.

Occam's Razor rules out the sheer complexity of any model showing our solar system orbiting any body other than the Sun.

If you want to be precise about it, the Earth does not rotate around the Sun.

Rather, the Sun and the Earth rotate around their mutual center of gravity, or barycenter. Same goes for the other planets. The barycenter of the Sun and the Earth is within the Sun, but is not at the center of the Sun. The barycenter of the Sun and Jupiter, on the other hand, is not contained within the Sun at all.

It's an ill-posed question since to say that something is at the center of everything requires some sort of absolute position system (a la Aristotle), which is a meaningless concept (an insight that goes at least as far back as Galileo).

It doesn't really affect the "Best Star Trek Captain" discussions (I always answer with the *vision* the creators had for the character not how it was acted)...but Kate Mulgrew is kind of a ditz

In interviews (like in The Captains film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org] ) she was clearly just doing Trek purely as a 'gig' for a paycheck...she had no personal connection to science or space whatsoever and did not see her role as a way to educate herself or broaden her horizons to improve her acting

to her it was all just "technobabble" which angers me to no end as a person who advocates for women in science...but it's her life and career so I'm not judging her choices necessarily...i just think it's unprofessional and lazy...her performance in Orange is the New Black is equally as bad, IMHO...very perfunctory

Mulgrew read the ***narration*** of the whole film...how could she do that and not know the film as about the earth being the *actual* center of the universe?

To be fair though, it IS usually technobabble, of the worst kind, too. Not that I think duping people is cool, but pretending that *any* Star Trek actors have some kind of authority to convey when it comes to science just cracks me up.

yeah I know what you mean...but we're techies so our definition of "technobabble" is more narrow than a non-tech, even one with a good education.

to Mulgrew, anything "science-y" was "technobabble"

this is the problem, Star Trek had mixed results with scientific accuracy...in that sense it is "technobabble" because it is fictional science in a future setting they are using...however, depending on which series at which time, the quality of the science dialogue was educational

I **liked** the fictional future science of the later series...it wasn't completely believable, but they definitely had a science advisor and you could see the consistency

It was educational...in the sense that it exposed me to new ideas & motivated me to ***actually look up the real science***

one thing Trekkies overlook is that today its mostly **teens** who watch Trek...average, everyday teenagers...I know this from my teaching experience, I'd have cheerleader type chicks mention Trek in papers

People have an inherent bias to trust successful people. Celebrities are the ultimate successful people. For a good example, see how many people trusted Jenny McCarthy when she started her campaign saying vaccines cause autism. She's a model, actress and television host with no medical or scientific education or qualifications at all - but she is also rich and famous, so a lot of people believed her.

The whole Voyager series was hit and miss save for two redeeming features - seven of nine and and seven of nines' mammalian protuberances.

I know I'm going to be in the minority here, but I have to say that Seven of Nine and the Doctor were the best features of Voyager -- not because of appearance, because they actually had some sort of character development and growth over the course of the series.

Everyone gets hung up on Jeri Ryan's outfit, just like I've heard people complain in recent years about Troi's outfits on TNG. Were they necessary? Of course not. Would the series be better if they dressed these characters like professionals an

Technobabble and Star Trek seem to go together quite well. I wouldn't criticize her for that.

As to her reading the narration of this whole film, and not knowing the film was earth centrist, a lot of that has to do with how the material was presented to her. Just because the final result that you get to see has a specific view, doesn't mean that what the people doing the voice over, or providing content were presented with that view. As a brief example, content that clearly indicates an earth centrist perspe

I thought I saw something once that said (TNG at least) actually had techno-babble guys. Like the script writers would stick [technobabble] on the script and some dudes would come along later and get some serious warp-bubble deflector inertial dampening jiggery pokery going on. Might be bullshit though.

I believe her. I fell that Kate is totally capable of being tricked into making a movie with such claims. I'm not sure that she has much of an argument though. She was paid to do something really really stupid and she did something really really stupid, and likely something that she even believed at the time until someone else explained it to her. By her argument she seems to be claiming that she shouldn't be permitted to make any films (which I completely support). If she finds out that there really isn't any "Starfleet" will she go after the Trek franchise too?

If you sequence the material correctly, and add in filler that you are willing to cut, you can get people to say all kinds of crazy stuff in voiceover recording.If you can get someone to say "If someone were to say 'No-one has ever proven than 6 million jews were killed in the holocaust' you would have doubts about their other works. No-one has ever proven than 6 million jews were killed in the holocaust. I mean, who says that?" and coach them a little, you can probably use it for a convincing voiceover of

You don't even need full sentences like your example. Properly recorded you can cut half sentences together and fully change their meaning to something which was never ever read or said in the original script.

As was already pointed out this is pretty much what happened in Innocence of Muslims. The director shot the film with the script mostly in place as he intended. He then had the actors come back in and say words and partial phrases that without context was meaningless to the actors then dubbed the audio

the long-debunked idea of the Earth being the centre of the Solar System.

"...the long-debunked theory of geocentrism – where the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the Sun resolves around it..."

The linked clip never makes this claim.

This documentary appears to be about the modern theory of geocentrism, the idea among some creationist circles that the Solar System is somewhere near the centre of the universe - at these scales, of course, the Earth's movement around the Sun is negligible so the ter

Well it's really all relative isn't it? I mean, defining the center some other arbitrary place probably makes the math simpler but really all the bits are robiting each other and choosing any one as a set reference is just arbitrary, right?

Moreover, physics is built on this very principle - gauge symmetry requires that any system of units and measurement should experience a gauge forces which would smooth it out to be equivalent to any other system of units and measurement.

Seems plausible you could construct a very very obtuse system which would assume the Earth is a stationary point.

But the Earth is the center of the universe! Look at your general theory of relativity! Any object can be consider the unmoving center of a frame of reference. Earth is at (0,0,0) and not rotating. Of course this implies large gravitional fields to keep the sun and the planets and the stars rotating around the Earth every 24 hours, and complex stuff like that. But that just makes the math more complicated. It is still a valid frame of reference.

But hey, why stop there? *** I *** am the center of the universe! All you people rotate around me! No need to bow down...

It may be a valid frame of reference. But we'll have to throw out relativity just to get the nearest star orbiting the earth. Also, when I say "nearest star", I do mean the Sun. We would be talking about something like.04C. Enough to observe relatavistic effects that just aren't there. Proxima Centauri would be going at something close to 10,000C. The sun would need to have 1.5 * 10^33 Newtons of outward force counteracted to stay in orbit. You're not joking about "Large gravitional fields". It would take

No, grandparent is right. The huge masses you describe are only needed if you assume that the background metric of the universe is unchanged. But if you are in a reference frame co-rotating with the world, then in that frame the whole universe is rotating at extreme speeds. This produces an extreme frame-dragging effect [wikipedia.org] which makes it impossible not to rotate at or nearly at the same velocity as the other objects at that distance - no huge masses needed. This is an example of the more general Mach's princip [wikipedia.org]

Except, I don't think that is what the general theory of relativity says. Maybe you're thinking of the special theory of relativity, which says that in inertial systems one frame of reference is just as valid as another. However, I don't think the sun and the earth represent an inertial system, so I'm not sure why that would apply.

Er, no. The special theory deals with inertial frames, you need the general theory for non-inertial frames. According to the general theory, you can't tell the difference between gravity and acceleration. So, you can claim that you were stationary on a roundabout and the rest of the universe swirling about you caused space to warp in such a way as to cause you to fall off. That's a perfectly valid interpretation according to general relativity, if a somewhat egocentric one.

The earth is the centre of the visible universe and thanks to Einstein's relativity, everything moves around us. So there is absolutely nothing wrong with the geocentrist idea, it just complicates the orbital mechanics equations when you want to fly a space ship to Mars somewhat, that's all.

I live in Thailand; I can't even READ the posted signs. But smile and wave to the police and there is no problem. I don't have a Global Positioning System, I only have a MPS (Me Positioning System). Works fine, but it makes me cross-eyed.

Cosmologists say that when we look in the sky and all the stars and planets, we can see them escaping us. This explains that the universe is expanding. But if we can observe the same thing from every side of Earth, wouldn't it mean that we are in the center?

Simple experiment: Blow up a balloon half way but do not tie it off, just pinch the end. This represents the universe. Now take a marker and put dots all over the surface of the balloon. These represent stars, planets, everything. Now start blowing into the balloon again to simulate the universe's continued expansion. You'll notice that all the dots are moving away from each other on all sides. No dot is getting closer to any other dot. This would also be true if you could somehow place dots inside the space of the balloon; and while it would remain true for a dot in the very center of the balloon, it also remains true for every other dot.

So seeing everything moving away from us does not require us to be at the center. We're just another dot...a pale blue one.

The earth IS the center of the universe. To say any other point in the universe is the center of the universe is equally as dumb, if not more so.

We can observe from here that the earth is the center of the universe. If we measure the expansion of the universe, EVERY SINGLE THING IN THE FUCKING UNIVERSE IS MOVING AWAY FROM THE EARTH AT ALMOST PRECISELY THE SAME RATE AS EVERY OTHER THING. This is because the universe is expanding.

May I suggest that you try asking some, or at least enquire where your source is?

Because I happen to have had BJUP science textbooks in school, and I read Ken Ham as well as Gould, and the claim that literalists are geocentrists doesn't sound at all like any of the books I've read.On the other hand, that claim does sound like a claim I've heard before, which is discussed in a paper by Lindgren (2014) [ssrn.com].

fuck, man! the bible disagrees WITH ITSELF. have you not read it? google 'bible errancy' and you'll find more inconsistencies than you'll ever want to see.

really a piece of shit for writing and 'ethics'. do this and you should be stoned to death. do that and you should be killed. god gets pissed off at his own creations and decided to go all murderous on them, then decided to forgive them for following his wishes!

It's worth noting that the Ecclesiastes verse is not in the context of astronomy, but rather highlighting the relative impermanence of human works. Humans and their ambitions come and go, but the days keep coming and the wind keeps blowing.

There's no reason to think it isn't referring to the apparent position of the sun, relative to an Earth-bound observer.

Wow there. You're not saying that the Bible is open to interpretation are you? Surely not the Holy Bible. This isn't some philosophical text. It is the word of the Lord. His very power guided the hands that put the words on the paper. Or so many people will have you believe.

Oh good grief you're going to a part of scripture that is literally poem, and looking at a psalm where the context is about the scale of God's power. Its not making a cosmological argument about the status of the earth.

And if you really want to be pedantic about it, the earth IS stationary relative to the people writing about it. Movement is relative to context, and as the context is the earth, the author is technically right even though thats completely not what he was talking about.

And Ecclesiastes? The whole book is about the repetitive nature of the world and how nothing seems to ever change. It too is using poetic language; as if you've never heard of the sun rising and setting.

The problem with sane Christians, (like sane Atheists, Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Hindus, and pretty much any group you can think of) is they tend not to shout that loudly. That doesn't imply that they don't exist, or even that they may not be the majority.

If someone shouts too loudly, my suggestion is to ignore them, they will likely eventually go away.

The big problem is that bashing christianity with statements-- whether true or not-- invariably is "popular" as measured by upvotes or moderations on whatever forum you happen to be on. Apologetic refutations are invariably less popular.

There is no description of the earth's foundations (and I'm sorry, but the original text is NOT the King's English anyway). For all we know, this "foundation" could be a reference to the orbit the Earth is set upon and a statement that the Earth cannot be moved from that foundation (not be moved by the readers, anyway). There's LITERALLY nothing there describing the "foundation" - not size, not shape, not composition, nothing. It's also true that land is often referred to as Earth, so it could even be a reference to that what supports dry land above the Earth's molten core. You can actually choose to take the Bible totally literally (even with a talking serpent) and still see that it is NOT an engineering or astrophysics text book with cutaway drawings, dimensions, etc. The texts (taken literally or metaphorically) simply lack details... and that's just FINE. Nobody complains when Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawkingwrites a book that lacks every little detail about the universe. I see no ammunition here for arguing pro/con this bit of scripture.

As for the sun, allow me to point out that we all (of all, and no, religions) use these expressions. Even those of us who fully understand celestial mechanics involved still say to our kids "be home by sunset" or "we'll be having dinner when the sun goes down" rather than "be home by the time this spot on the Earth's surface has rotated sufficiently away from the sun that it is no longer visible" or some other such nonsense. This is about as silly as when Bill Nye tried to slam the Bible as anti-science because it has a verse that refers to the moon as a light (and HE points out that it's not a source of light, just reflecting sunlight). Apparently in Mr. Nye's world, couples do not go out for a romantic stroll in the "moonlight", nobody goes for a "moonlight" swim, etc. The man's an idiot.

What it all really comes down to is something every person working Guidance and Navigation at the Johnson Space Center is quite familiar with: "Frame of Reference". If you set your frame of reference to the center of the sun, then everything (including all the other galaxies) goes around the sun. If you set your frame of reference to the center of the Earth, then everything, including the sun and the rest of the universe, goes around the Earth (and this is a common frame of reference used in orbital spaceflight). You could set your frame of reference to the center of the moon, or the ISS in Low Earth Orbit, or any other arbitrary point in space. It's all relative (in the basic geometric sense rather than the Einstein sense). Taking a Bible verse about sunrise and sunset an using it to claim that the book is wrong, would be like running down the street denouncing every person who speaks of sunrise or sunset - sheer lunacy. The biggest joke of all in this argument about taking the Bible "literally" is that most of those (both for and against the Bible) who claim to be taking it "literally" are actually NOT; they're almost always projecting lots of junk onto it that is plainly (literally?) NOT there.

Allow me to propose a simple rule-of-thumb for Bible readers (both "the faithful" and the skeptics) as follows: Do not criticize it any differently than you criticize every other book (i.e. use consistent standards) and do not take individual sentences out-of-context from ANY book. Bible "verses" are just sentences and they were NOT numbered in the original text (the numbers were added to aid in navigating the text). If person A gets to use individual Bible sentences, person B gets to use individual sentences from any other book. If person A gets to heap his own interpretations onto the clear text of the Bible, then person B gets to do likewise with other books.

Here's a list of inconsistencies [evilbible.com] in the Bible backing the claim that it disagrees with itself. Now, to be honest, I have a low standard for religious works like the Bible or Das Kapital. But for these works to be applicable to the morals and ethics of the modern world, you have to filter them heavily. At some point, that becomes more work than it's worth.

Let's start with talking snakes.An apple filled with knowledge.Everybody is related to Adam and Eve, and completely inbred.Two of every animal fit into a single boat, and none of them ate each other.All the animals are inbred, back to the ark.

It was the basin in the temple - in Exodus I think. Diameter 10 cubits, circumference 30 cubits. To one significant digit, that is the correct value for Pi. On the other hand, remember that a 'cubit' is the distance from your fingertips to your elbow. You would be lucky if you used 40 men and got even one significant digit correct. They wouldn't use women in those days. If you used men for the circumference and women for the diameter you probably would get a value for Pi of less than 3.0.

The Genesis cosmography is a rip off of the Sumero-akkadian cosmography, which was most definitely geocentric. Why do you think by the Hellenic age even the Jews had stopped interpreting Genesis literally?

It isn't a matter of what it looks like, it rips off the entire crystal dome notion. I don't know why that would bother you an more than the fact Hebrew is a Canaanite dialect written in a script that originates in Egyptian and Sumerian sources.

Hebrew is an Akkadian dialect, and comes from further east than the Canaanites.

Hebrew is in fact one of the Cannanite languages, which in turn is part of the Northwest Semitic branch of the Semitic family. Akkadian, on the other hand, belongs to a different branch of Semitic, namely East Semitic. See here [wikipedia.org] for the subgrouping under Semitic, which has been the mainstream for many decades now.

Yeah, yeah, funny how money is usually behind being duped in cases like these.
Mulgrew: I hadnt worked in ages, bill were piling up, thankfully I was duped and made the mortgage payment. I can aways SAY I was duped later.
Scientists: Well, we needed some money and they said they had Kate Mulgrew. Who has to think about that? She was on Star Trek! Dupe me up, Scotty!